PlayClaw 5 – Game Recording and Streaming

I have been using this program for many years! And I am 100% satisfied with it even now!
When you play your favorite video games and want to capture a good moment, then you need a simple program to capture video and then post it to YouTube! This program will give you high quality with minimal load on your CPU and RAM!
Of course, if you want to get more, something like... for example, streaming and recording at the same time, then you need to look at a different version of this program! Or other programs;)
But if you need a small handy program for high-quality video capture - then this is my choice!
You can also watch my videos on my

Where almost all videos are made thanks to this program!
Also don't forget to follow me everywhere =)

The marketplace for screen capture tools is starting to get quite crowded, but PlayClaw stands out as it strikes a great balance between ease of use and quality. The main competitors are Bandicam, Fraps, and Dxtory. PlayClaw beats Fraps as it is much less resources intensive, and produces higher quality ouput than Bandicam in most cases. Using PlayClaw usually results in nothing more than a 1 to 5 frame rate decrease and very few dropped frames during recording. Dxtory, coupled with the Lagarith codec produces slightly better results, and is even less resource intensive, but takes a bit more effort to set it up; in contrast the PlayClaw UI is very easy to navigate.
The main features are: Record in-game footage. Record the desktop. Buffer a period of footage (from 5 to 600seconds). Take screenshots. Configure input from multiple audio sources including mic. You can also stream to Twitch, YouTube and Customer Server (not tested yet)
Recording desktop / in-game and activating recording to capture the buffered footage never show any interuption or performance hit. I have tried streaming to a 10,000prm HDD, and also 5400. As with all capture tools the faster the hard drive the better, but footage was still OK on the slower drive. Being able to define the number of CPU threads the software utilises really helps performance. Other essential options are the ability to define frame rate for capture and set the resolution (although I would recommend recording native and then scaling during editing).
One thing I really like is the ability have PlayClaw write audio tracks in seperate files. This makes it a lot more convenient if editing audio as each each source (in-game or mic) gets it's own file. So no bother with extracting audio from the video file, or having all audio streams mixed.
Taking screenshots produces a nice overlay effect - it really lets you know a shot has been taken without being intrusive. Other overlays can be configured to show frame rate, recording duration, buffer, a clock and many other features. One of the most useful overlapys shows how large your recording is.
The main area where PlayClaw could improve is around the MJPEG codec. It appears they use their own custom codec and many have found it can be a pain finding editing software to support it. (Protip - If you have problems opening the files in your editor, try installing the free version of Bandicam - this will install / update the codecs - it certainly worked for Sony Movie Studio 12 and 13). It spoils what is otherwise a very easy to use application. It would be nice if they supported advanced options that allowed the user to install their own codecs. Edit: The developer has kindly clarified the MJPEG issue. But out of all the capture software I have tested over the years, PlayClaw is the only one that caused problems like this. So I am not changing my comment, as many people have found my 'pro tip' useful.
Overall PlayClaw is a great piece of software. I am using it exclusively to capture footage. It does a great job.
Edit: May 2015 - Slight changes to incorporate questions received below

as a noob youtube playthrough person i enjoy using this software. Its so CPU and RAM light even though its packed with so much.
10/10 I dare anyone not to like this. Files are saved as AVI but compressed in MJPEG (Moving Jpeg) so for my Half-Life 2 sries. 30 mins at 1080p is 10-15gb. Compress it to 720p in Sony Vegas and bang >1gb
For Assassins Creed 4 its more like 20GB but its Jpeg formatted so obviously the mpre colours used the bigger the file. Still... Its an EPIC peice of software. GET IT IF YOU PLAN ON RECORDING YOUTUBE VIDS!

Oh, well. PlayClaw 5 isn't a really popular thing among content makers. So you won't find quick setups and tweaks for it anywhere, like for OBS or Fraps, or something of that much hype. And yeah, like most other software for recording/streaming video, PlayClaw does have its limits.
The user interface is quite simple, the variety of possible options is maybe not the dream-come-true, but more or less covering all the needs of the video capturing process. The thing I like the most, though, is about its very modest appetite for PC resources. You don't need to worry about your FPS even if you use some low-grade video card, like 1050, 1060, or something of that range.
However, I've witnessed enough inconveniences as well. First of all, in some action games with procedurally generating landscape, I saw the stuttering in the video, if I was trying to record it in something higher than 30 FPS. Something with the process of processing information in games with a very dynamically changing environment - maybe I need more codecs, who knows?
Second notable issue - the size of files. You can't record hours after hours, without having terabytes of free space on your hard drive. One hour of some dynamic action can take more than 20 Gb space...
Also, PlawClaw has some troubles with EasyAntiCheat - a popular resolution for many multiplayer games. It's not a general problem - usually, I record EAC-protected games just fine. But sometimes, primarily short after some EAC update, I simply can't run the game while PlawClaw is open. I think the problem is not on the PlawClaw side, but it is a notable side effect you should know about.
There might be some other issues, of course, but nothing you couldn't handle if you have at least some experience and a basic level of understanding of how such software is working.
Overall, it's a decent program for video recording and streaming, for a decent price. 7/10 grade for me. Not the greatest, but quite universal, agile, and easy-to-use software piece.

I have to say, that all things considered: Playclaw is an amazing product and was definitely worth every penny. When I bought it originally, it was simpy a game recorded. It has evovled and it can do everything I need it to do without dropping frames. I'm even able to recorded Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare at 60FPS. The product is great and, bar any unusual mishaps or changes, I won't be looking elsewhere for screen capture programs.

I love this software
Tons of bells and whistles , make a regular recorder look like crap, use this for YouTube , its very light and way more options and settings (but not scary and user frendly ) than those out there on the market. GET IT
9/10

Edit: Now supports Nvidia h.264 cores, read note at bottom for info.
Overall the best and most feature rich, while still being user friend recording software out there.
If you can't get/don't like ShadowPlay™'s performance, this is definitely for you. This has very little impact on pretty much everything, granted you have a quad core or better. I personally use it to record everything I do, especially battlefield. In BF4 I'm regularly getting 45-80 FPS on the ultra preset(4xAA) @ 1080p, and while running playclaw I only dip down to 40, still going up to 75+ in some places. That's very minor performance impact for something that's actively compressing files for you.
As for size, its active compression is also very effective. A 2 hour 30 minute video recording in 720p 95% quality (better than fraps, fraps is 90%) was only 45GB. That's very impressive.
Playclaw also features a pre-record feature, which is probably my favorite feature. It actively records into your RAM, and keeps recording (up to) the last 10 minutes of your game, making sure you never miss the recording of that amazing 1,300 meter headshot. This pre-record feature has saved my bacon on a LOT of amazing clips I wanted to capture for one reason or another. It also has very little performance impact (granted you have the RAM available.)
Lastly, a very often overlooked feature in a recording software, is it's write protection. Playclaw runs a separate process for all it's video writes, saving your clip even if playclaw, or more often your game crashes. This means you get every last second recorded and you don't get corrupted video or write faults on your hard drive. A few other programs *cough* dxstroy *cough* don't have this. It's truly one of the most overlooked features in recording software.
Sidenote: Playclaw 5 supports Intel™ Quicksync™, which makes the recording process almost entirely ineffective towards your performance. I don't have any experience with this being an AMD user, but I've heard good things. Supposedly you should be looking at a 1% performance hit instead of around 5% to 15% without it, thus making it a better option than ShadowPlay anyways.
Edit note: Playclaw now supports the same Nvidia compression engine as ShadowPlay. This means you get the same performance as ShadowPlay, but with playclaws interface and overlays. A benefit to some.